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July 3, 2024 19 mins

In this week’s episode, Michael shares his reporting from the spin room of last week’s presidential debate in Atlanta. He and James unpack the fallout from Biden’s shockingly poor performance. Was even Donald Trump surprised by what he saw? What does this mean for the future of both campaigns? And which potential Biden-replacement candidate caught Michael’s eye in Atlanta? Tune in to find out.

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
All along, he's been saying, it's not going to be
me against Joe Biden. It's going to be somebody else.
They're going to trade him out. I mean, he's always thought,
or his worst nightmare, that it would be Michelle Obama
that he was running against. But anybody was alarming compared
to the easy ride he felt that he would have
against Joe Biden. And of course that has come with

(00:27):
him saying again and again and again, Joe is senile,
Joe was walking into walls. Joe was not running the country.
Joe is completely out of it. This is Fire and
Fury the Podcast. I'm Michael Wolf and I'm James Truman.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Let's start by going back to something you said on
this podcast a few weeks ago, which is that one
of Trump's worries was that he wouldn't get to run
against Biden because he thought it was the easiest path
to victory. He's never doubted that he can beat Biden.
Now suddenly everything's up in the air.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
I think it's interesting to imagine what Donald Trump was
feeling during this debate, because I have a feeling that
of all the fifty million people involved in watching this,
the person who was most shocked was Donald Trump. So
suddenly everybody is, including Donald Trump, seeing that this is real.

(01:32):
I mean, so it's like this thing came true. It
was more vivid, more real, more alarming than anything you
might have imagined. So Donald Trump, from his perspective, he's
got to suddenly recalibrate everything on the fly. He cannot

(01:54):
really be his usual Donald Trump because it would have
egregiously backfired for him to kick this old and enfeebled
man in the Trumpian way. And then he had to
do this other recalibration, which is that this guy is
falling apart, but I don't want him to fall apart.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah that interested me.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, you know, I gotta do something here to kind
of keep him going. So I got to run this debate,
and I have to keep it interesting, and I have
to do my you know, my my thing, the stick.
But at the same time, how do you put yourself
in the position of not looking like a real shit
treating this old man so poorly, and you how do

(02:37):
you prop him up just to the level that he
needs to be propped up to stay in the game.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
I was surprised because obviously the point had been made
in the first twenty minutes that Biden was barely there.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
I wondered if.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
We'd see Trump go easy on him for the reasons
you've just described, But I guess I felt he couldn't
help himself being a bully.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
I actually think that was a restrained Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, you're in the spin room.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I'm really excited to hear what that was like, as
you saw this thing unfold in this train wreck way.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Well, first thing, this is in Atlanta, in an arena
at Georgia Tech. You get there and you're surrounded by
fraternities and guys without their shirts on the lawn, blaring
music and playing drinking games. So it's as though they
are completely unaware that the fate of the Republic is
about to unfold. So before the debate, there's really only

(03:31):
one thing happening, and that's that Gavin Newsom is there.
He's really the dominant figure in this thing. I'd never
been in that kind of proximity to Newsom before. First thing,
the guy is trumpy in height, and the guy has
this fantastic hair, fantastic and you realize, and it's a

(03:52):
big thing, and really an underappreciated thing, how important hair
is in politics. Yeah, and obviously Trump kind of singularly
makes that point in the legacy of gray, yes, even
ridiculous hair, and you couldn't avoid the contrast. There is
Newsom's hair and Donald Trump's hair. In that match up,

(04:15):
you know, Newsom is clearly a winner. And then the
debate begins, and it's just a kind of a hush
in the room from that first moment when Biden walks out.
It's just clear from moment one. Now, I actually understand
from some Trump people that actually Trump didn't see this

(04:37):
because he was positioned to come out, so he didn't
see Biden coming out. So it took him a while
to catch up to the fact that something unexpected, unimaginable
in the history of presidential debates and the history of
presidential media was taking place. And then immediately after the debate,

(04:58):
all of the Republicans surrogate. It's every vice presidential possibility,
Lindsey Graham, a few other senators, the Trump brain trust,
Jason Miller, Chris Losovita, and there are no Democrats on
the floor, and there's a kind of quartern of reporters

(05:18):
waiting for where they should come out. And they're waiting
and they're waiting and they're waiting and they're waiting, and
it's nothing. It takes them I think almost a half
an hour, and then they came out in mass actually
sort of in a little group, all huddled.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Together, having determined their talking points.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, I guess, having determined their talking points and also
not wanting to be alone. But here too, Newsome was
at the center. Perhaps at the center seemed because he's
so tall and the hair is so good. But again,
it really had that immediate feeling of if you need

(05:58):
an alternative, here is the alternative. And then the Trump people,
I mean Chris Losovita, who is one of the two
campaign heads with Susie Wiles, he was kind of furiously
arguing for why Biden definitely had to continue to be
the nominee. He couldn't get out of the race. And

(06:21):
it was kind of like, people accuse us as undermining democracy. Well, imagine,
this man is the elected nominee, his party has voted
for him, and now they're going to throw him out.
Your undermining democracy. So it was like this desperate moment,
how do we keep this guy in the race.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
So the Republicans found themselves strategically shilling for Biden.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Absolutely, this is now as great a crisis for the
Republicans as it is for the Democrats.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Could you explain that a little bit further? Why is
that good for Democrats?

Speaker 1 (06:55):
What's good for Democrats is getting rid of Joe Biden.
It doesn't matter what the old time alternative is, it
cannot be worse than this. Yeah, Joe Biden will lose
this election. I mean, that's certainly what the Republicans believe,
and I think it is increasingly what most Democrats believe.

(07:16):
Will be back right after the break.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
The other messaging that began over the weekend was kind
of casting Jill Biden as Lady Macbeth, the woman who
drove her husband on from her own luss for power.
Where did that come from?

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Do you think?

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Is that a Republican or Democrat or just a general
journalistic kind of trope that English I think.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
I think all of the above not helped by being
on the cover of Vogue.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
Well.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
I have to say my Alma mater really hit it
out of the park there with a perfect timing cover
story on Jill Biden. While I was going to ask
you about the felon getting sentence next week, but we're
just receiving breaking news that might well be delayed because
of the Supreme Court decision. I mean, Trump got to
the weekend with this incredible gift and this tailwind. Then

(08:10):
on Monday he got another jolt of it, a decision
that can only be seen to favor him.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Whenever you talk about Donald Trump, I really think you
have to see it in the context that the rest
of us think we live in a relative ruh of
bad luck, and Trump, unlike we mortals, has the most
incredible luck you can possibly imagine. Even when things go

(08:37):
incredibly badly for him, somehow his luck rescues him. Everybody
else would say eventually all good things come to an end,
but they never seem to come to an end. With Trump.
There's always another delay, always another option, always an out.
This is Houdini like behavior. I do hear from the

(08:58):
Trump side, however, that they actually expect there to be
jail time, which could once more change the dynamic here.
Of course, it won't change the dynamic if we never
get in front of a judge to deliver a sentence.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
You've talked about this a lot and written about it
in your books that even among the people close to him,
many of whom despise him. There is this kind of
awe and perhaps fear that he has some kind of
shamanic gift for getting out of scrapes, being lucky, creating
a destiny that seemed impossible. You've also talked about the

(09:33):
other side of that that handled these gifts and these opportunities.
He has a commensurate ability to fuck it up. How
do you see the fucking up part possibly playing out
with this tailwind from the debate and the Supreme Court.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Well, I mean, first, the shamanic part is super interesting,
and everybody around him they don't understand it more than
we understand it. They don't give themselves credit like we're
the most brilliant strategists in the world. Yeah, and they
don't really particularly give credit to Trump's instincts either. They
give credit to some other thing that happens, some magic properties.

(10:11):
So when they explain what often seems inexplicable, they say
that's Trump, as though that explains what, otherwise in normal
political cause and effect terms, could never be explained.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
So he could march forward into January sixth and bring
down this legal whirlwind upon himself, only to be given
immunity by the Supreme Court. How does that possibly happen
in any logical political cause and effect.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, and given that immunity, one of the first things
he tweeted on True Social was he wanted to hold
military tribunal for treason for Liz Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell,
which was completely unnecessary. I mean, I understand it's Donald
being the entertainer, the extreme entertainer, but why do you
do that?

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah. Actually, a very senior, most influential donor class Democrat
who has been calling me off and called me last
night and said you're going to jail. I said yes,
but just as likely I might become the ambassador to

(11:25):
a small country.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
Head of Commas.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
So that's always the dichotomy with Donald Trump. It's reward
and punishment, reward and punishment, and sometimes he mixes it up.
I meant to punish you, but I'm rewarding you. And again,
you could just go back to reality television. Let's do that.
Someone's got to die, someone's got to be thrown off.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
I know Trump supporters. You know them too. None of
the ones I know a maga. They're kind of liberals
who no longer identify with the Democratic Party, or they
like Trump for his kind of I guess, libertarian show
voting kind of deconstructive approach. He doesn't ever seem to
feel he needs to do anything for them. It's always

(12:09):
directed towards magas such as the treason trial and lynching
of Nancy Pelosi or whatever. Is that going to play
against him?

Speaker 1 (12:16):
First, I'm interested that you know Trump people. I don't
know any Trump You don't, well, I know Trump people
who get paid for this, and in a performative sense
are Trump people, But you know actual Trump voters.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
My advice to you, Michael is you have to leave
Manhattan to meet them, and you're probably not going to
meet them on the South Fork of Long Island either.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
Probably you're going to various a little bit. Maybe.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Well, I actually my in laws are Trump.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Voters, Okay, all right? So how do they take to
Donald Trump prescribing lynching for his opponents?

Speaker 1 (12:48):
So I actually try not to ask these questions, But
when curiosity gets the better of me and I ask them,
they seem unruffled by this, as though this is just
a perfectly ordinary day, that nothing of exceptional note has
occurred here, Because everybody understands Donald Trump's character.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, so I guess the question I was leading to
is that you're right, people have come to accept it
as performative. But there's something about the Supreme Court decision
that kind of enabled it to become real. And that
was to me the shift that I think.

Speaker 4 (13:25):
No.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
I think if you can circle that back to the
Democrats issue with Joe Biden, I guess you could say
it has been at a crisis. The crisis has been mounting,
but now this is, I would say, at the formal
tipping point. Yeah, if you don't get rid of Joe Biden,
this is the reality that you're going to face. I'm

(13:48):
not sure how you can get around that. As a
matter of fact, I might even say that this is
another one of those examples. Trump gets what he wants here,
but this will now be undermined because he's going to
get another candidate rather than Joe Biden. And I kind
of believe that almost anybody else will defeat Donald Trump. Wow,

(14:10):
Joe Biden will not defeat Donald Trump. Donald Trump will
defeat Joe Biden any other Democrat, because I think I
think Trump is a fundamentally incredibly flawed and weak candidate,
just not against Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
So, just off the top of your head, who do
you think is the one or two who are the
most likely to get the nomination?

Speaker 1 (14:32):
I think Gavin Newsom is the most logical person at
this point. He's really been the only person throughout the
past year who's positioned himself as the alternative. He's put
himself out there. He's you know, he's become this really
the most strident and dependable rhetorical Trump opponent.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
You said it.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
The one he was most scared of was Michelle Obama.
I don't understand the Michelle Obama thing. I mean, she's
said so many times she hates politics, she doesn't want
to be aligned with politics, But why would she run?

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Well, I don't think she will be. I think it's
in his mind for whatever reason, having to do with Obama,
having to do with women, having to do with race,
and having to do with the fact that she sold
so many books. Ah, those kinds of commercial considerations are
very powerful with him. That she sold more books than

(15:28):
he sold. Yeah, she sold more books than I sold.
She sold more books than everybody has sold, even me.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
Jeez, good lord, does this question Mark over who the
candidate is. Does that impact Trump's choice of VP? I mean,
how do you now make that choice if you don't
know who the candidate and the candidate's VP is going
to be.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
I think if the Democrats have another candidate, then that
upends everything about this race. That will not be clear, however,
until probably August. I mean, it might be clear that
Joe Biden is not the candidate, but who is the
candidate that's not clear until the convention in August. Whereas
the Republican's convention starts on the fifteenth of this month,

(16:12):
so he has to have a vice presidential pick by then.
The very close circle around Trump does not know when
he's going to make this decision, but the assumption was
that if he was sentenced on July eleventh, then to
preempt whatever the sentence scene is, the bad news of

(16:34):
the sentencing, he would almost immediately announce his vice presidential choice.
We would swap out the headlines there, and as far
as I understand, this is pretty good information. The lineup
is vance ahead by a smidgeon, then Doug Bergham, who

(16:55):
has risen partly because he's super rich, and then Marco
Rubio bringing up the rear of these three guys who
are the central figures, is very likely to be one
of these guys, except if it's a wild card that
takes us literally right up until the moment when he
makes this decision. In twenty sixteen, when he picked Mike

(17:20):
Pence and they had announced it and the news conference
was scheduled to announce Mike Pence to the world. Several
hours before the news conference, he was still asking people
around him, what if I go out there with somebody else?
But I don't know how you look at this in
terms of a totally remade Democratic slate, because a Democratic

(17:43):
slate would be a new candidate, overwhelmingly likely a new
vice presidential pick two. I mean, this is what they're
terrified of, completely throwing the race into question and completely
having new blood and new, dynamic, new people who he
has and spent a year of villifying.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah yeah, but also requires the Democrats to master chaos
in a Trumpian way, which they have not shown themselves
to be gifted that well.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
I think if you throw open a convention.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Any shit can happen. Should we meet again in.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
A week, Yeah, I mean you can a week week.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
A week, you know, the longest week.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
You know, a week is a year in politics, a
week is now a whole civilization and.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Well, fascinating stuff is always Michael, thank you.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
That's all we have for today. We'll be back next
week with the latest on Donald Trump and his presidential campaign.
Fire and Fury.

Speaker 4 (18:45):
The podcast is hosted and executive produced by Michael Woolf
and James Truman. The producers are Adam Waller and Emily Marrono,
executive producers for Kaleidoscope. Mangish had to get an Velocian
executive producers for iHeart On Nikki Otoo and Katrina novel

(19:09):
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